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Monday, April 18, 2011

No fake eggs, only good and bad ones

The news you have been fed by the radio, newspapers or the TV about fake eggs is inaccurate -- fake, if you will.
The so-called "fake" eggs seized from the Pulau Tikus wet market in Penang a few weeks ago were real.

Apparently, the department ran tests and found nothing fake about the eggs. So, don't worry. Go ahead and have your hard-boiled eggs or roti telur today.

When my colleague told me about fake eggs from China being sold here, I was amused. According to him, it costs only three sen to produce a fake egg.

If indeed eggs can be faked -- and so cheaply at that -- greedy local traders would be crowing all the way to the bank. Poultry farmers would be crying foul.

But now we know that "fake" eggs are but only deformed ones that are deemed unfit for sale because they are not aesthetically pleasing.

Ironically, such confusion and controversy can only happen in the modern age. Those who love their eggs these days have probably never reared chickens. If they had, they would not have been so easily ruffled.

When my family lived in the kampung back in the 1970s, we reared chicken, ducks, turkeys and geese.

Our neighbours also had their free-ranging poultry.

As children, we knew how to distinguish one type of egg from another, and not mistake a duck's egg for a hen's. We also saw our share of strange eggs, especially those from chickens.

Did you know that shell of the hen's egg is soft when it is laid, but hardens within seconds?

But some of the eggs remained soft indefinitely. We have also seen "deformed" ones, which shells are rough to the touch. Some are not oval but round like a turtle's egg. There were also those with shells so thin they cracked as easily as a lizard's egg.

Some eggs came with two yolks, which according to an old wives' tale, would result in the birth of Siamese twins if they were eaten by a pregnant woman.

To deal with deformities of the egg shell, we burned cockle shells, ground them into powder, and added it into the chicken feed.

I do not know if that is true. But I do know that when we wanted the yolks to be bright yellow, we only needed to feed the hens a ground padi husk and corn mix.

The problem kampung folk faced those days was not fake eggs, but hidden eggs. The free-ranging hens were experts in hiding their eggs - in the lemon grass (serai) bushes or under piles of firewood.

Our clue was the hen's incessant clucking after it has laid an egg.

Where the hen clucks, the egg is not far away. The Malay proverb Bertelur sebiji, riuh sekampung was hatched from this. It is applied to people who like to brag about their accomplishments, especially small, insignificant deeds.

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ABOUT ME

I am a journalist, having worked with the New Straits Times for over 22 years in various capacities on the editorial team. I took early retirement from regular work to pursue my passion in art at the end of 2014. I founded the KL Sketchers group, the first Urban Sketching group to hold a public exhibition in University Malaya in 2013. I am also founder of several other art groups, including Malaysian Watercolours,Malaysian Plein Aire Artists, and the Asian Watercolours on Facebook. These days I still write but sketch and paint outdoors mostly, looking at life from an artist's point of view.

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